Corneal abnormalities seen with down syndrome

June 25, 2018

(HealthDay)—Patients with Down syndrome (DS) have steeper and thinner corneas and more corneal aberrations than patients without DS, according to a study published online June 21 in JAMA Ophthalmology.

Jorge L. Alio, M.D., Ph.D., from Universidad Miguel Hernández in Alicante, Spain, and colleagues performed a multicenter case-control study to characterize the abnormal features of the cornea in 112 patients with DS and 105 healthy controls without DS. The study included 321 eyes of the 217 participants.

After clinical assessment of corneal topography, the researchers found that 71.3 percent of patients in the DS group showed evidence of keratoconus. There were differences in steepest keratometry of 47.35 diopters in patients with DS versus 43.7 diopters in control subjects. There were also differences in corneal pachymetry of 503 µm in patients with DS versus 545 µm in controls.

"The findings suggest a detailed corneal study should be considered in such patients to detect keratoconus and implement treatment as appropriate to try to avoid serious visual impairment in this group of patients," the authors write.

Related Stories

(HealthDay)—Patients with HIV and HIV-associated sensory neuropathy (HIV-SN) have reduced corneal nerve fiber density, which can be identified using in vivo corneal confocal microscopy (IVCCM), according to a study published ...

A new review is the first to directly examine the role of various stem cells in the healing of wounded cornea, the outermost part of the eye. In contrast with most other reviews, it covers all major corneal cell types in ...

New national research led by Jonathan Lass of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has found that corneal donor tissue can be safely stored for 11 days before transplantation surgery to correct eye problems ...

Patients in the United States who have the cornea-damaging disease keratoconus may soon be able to benefit from a new treatment that is already proving effective in Europe and other parts of the world. The treatment, called ...

An innovative procedure may improve outcomes in people with a degenerative eye disease, suggest five-year results from a study presented at AAO 2016, the 120th annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Transplantation ...

Recommended for you

By combining two imaging modalities—adaptive optics and angiography—investigators at the National Eye Institute (NEI) can see live neurons, epithelial cells, and blood vessels deep in the eye's light-sensing retina. Resolving ...

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Singapore has developed an eyepatch with dissolvable needles for use in treating eye diseases. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the ...

Calcified nodules in the retina are associated with progression to late stages of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Experts from Queen's University Belfast, working in partnership with the University of Alabama of Birmingham ...

A new form of therapy may halt or even reverse a form of progressive vision loss that, until now, has inevitably led to blindness. This hyper-targeted approach offers hope to individuals living with spinocerebellar ataxia ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.